(6 Nov 2013) Finding the treasure was just the start of the hunt - after the announcement of the discovery of more than 1,400 Nazi-looted artworks in Munich on Tuesday, the race is on the find the rightful owners.
The Art Loss Register, a London-based company that specialises in retrieving lost and stolen art, expects the find to keep them busy for years.
German officials have not revealed details about the vast majority of the works found - sparking a scramble for information on the part of art-hunters and lawyers for those seeking to recover looted art.
"Some will require extensive research to try and find the victim," the Art Loss Register's chairman, Julian Radcliffe, told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
He said that having registered an item on its database on behalf on the victim or the original insurer, the Art Loss Register then searches "about 400-thousand items a year which are going through the sale rooms, art fairs, exhibitions, the internet, until we find stolen items which have usually been offered for sale."
Radcliffe also said the group hopes to send an employee to Germany to compare the works found there against its database of hundreds of thousands of artworks.
The trove was found in early 2012 at the Munich apartment of a man whom officials didn't name but who has been identified in media reports as 80-year-old Cornelius Gurlitt.
His father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, was an art dealer who acted for the Nazis in the 1930s to sell art considered "degenerate" by the regime - including Impressionist and modern masterpieces - outside Germany in return for millions in cash.
"When the customs officials searched his flat, his apartment, they found large amounts of tin food and so on, and behind these was stored pictures," Radcliffe said.
"We were obviously concerned initially that they might be not stored in good conditions, but at the press conference yesterday they said that the conditions weren't too bad."
Some of the works were seized from museums, while others were stolen or bought for a pittance from Jewish collectors forced to sell their art.
German authorities are keeping many details of the spectacular find a secret for now, citing an ongoing tax probe into their owner.
They have only described a dozen of the pieces, including - tantalisingly - previously unknown paintings by Matisse, Chagall and German artist Otto Dix.
The Art Loss Register's team of art sleuths, historians and legal experts was busy on Wednesday trying to match works on its database with items found in Germany.
It has already found one match - it has been looking for Matisse's "Seated Woman", one of the works shown off by German prosecutors on Tuesday.
Amid the uncertainty, prospective owners can be reassured on one count.
The paintings were found in one room at Gurlitt's apartment. Even though some were found hidden behind rows of tinned food, Radcliffe said he was relieved most of the paintings recovered were in good condition.
Radcliffe said that while works on paper could be fragile, oil paintings on canvas or board should be largely undamaged after decades in storage.
"The ideal place for art is to be on a wall in a good environment," he said, meaning "at a constant temperature and humidity and without too much light, and to be seen and exhibited."
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